At the beginning of the establishment of the Japanese Kwantung Army, it was indeed the indispensable elite of the Japanese army. Founded in 1906, the army initially consisted of only one infantry division and one heavy artillery battalion, supplemented by six separate garrison battalions as railway guards, with a total strength of 14,000 men and headquarters in Lushun.
From the beginning of the war of aggression against China, the elite of the Kwantung Army was constantly transferred to new battlefields.
Since then, the Japanese Kwantung Army has always been the vanguard of the invasion of China, and has existed as a strategic reserve of Japanese imperialism, so it is exceptionally elite. After the outbreak of the all-out war of aggression against China, a large number of troops were drawn from here to fight in the south. Even so, by 1941, the Japanese Kwantung Army had reached its peak, with a total strength of 700,000 men. After the outbreak of the Pacific War, the Japanese Kwantung Army became the only unit that could be sent to Southeast Asia on a large scale to perform land combat missions, and 100,000 well-trained officers and soldiers were transferred away, and by 1945, the Japanese base camp had drawn 13 divisions from the Kwantung Army to the Pacific Theater.
In addition to being sent to the Pacific Theater, in April 1945, as the American army advanced to the Japanese base camp on the Japanese mainland, 7 elite divisions were drawn from the Kwantung Army to return to the defense.
The combined strength of the two is nearly 600,000, so in the more than three years from the end of 1941 to the beginning of 1945, the entire Japanese Kwantung Army almost underwent a complete change of blood, not to mention that a large number of elites were sent to Kannai before.
By 1945, in order to resist the Chinese army and the Soviet army, although the headquarters of the Kwantung Army had been expanded once again, the total strength was once again expanded to 700,000 people, but this time it was no longer the elite division that was indispensable in the past. Most of them have not undergone formal military training, and their physical fitness is far worse than that of the old devils before.
According to Soviet sources, the physical fitness of the soldiers of the Kwantung Army was like this.
On the second day of the Japanese Emperor's announcement of surrender, the Japanese Kwantung Army gave up resistance and surrendered to the Soviet Union. According to statistics at the time, from August 8, 1945, when the Soviet Union officially declared war on Japan at 23:00 Moscow time, to August 23, 1945, when the organized fighting between the two sides basically stopped after the Soviet army captured Lushun, the Soviet army captured nearly 600,000 prisoners of war.
As the United States and the Soviet Union turned against each other, the Soviet Union decided to transport the healthier members of these prisoners of war to Siberia as laborers, in retaliation for the President of the United States for refusing to divide the United States and the Soviet Union to occupy Hokkaido. According to Stalin's report presented to the People's Commissariat of the Interior of the Soviet Union on February 26, 1946, 499807 of the 594,000 Japanese prisoners of war on the register were transferred to Soviet areas, and 94,193 remained there, handed over to China, or were released because they were not Japanese prisoners. The vast majority of these Japanese prisoners of war who were not transferred to the Soviet Union were sick, wounded or overwhelmed workers.
After preliminary screening, the main composition of Japanese prisoners of war transferred to the Territory of the Soviet Union in the Siberian region was: 166 generals, 21,345 officers and 478296 non-commissioned officers and ordinary soldiers.
In addition to the age of senior officers, most of the middle and lower-ranking officers and ordinary soldiers are between the ages of 18 and 35.
Captured Japanese troops
However, the physical fitness of these young men is not very good.
After entering the Soviet Union, Soviet military doctors divided the prisoners of war who participated in labor into 4 classes according to their different strength levels:
The first level, engaged in heavy manual labor such as stone mining;
The 2nd grade, engaged in wood work;
The 3rd class, engaged in the clearance of war damage, fortifications along the railway, etc.;
The 4th class, the malnourished, is engaged in auxiliary work such as cleaning and cooking in prisoner-of-war camps.
Of the four classes, the 1st and 2nd classes accounted for 80% of the total number of PRISONERs.
That is to say, after the initial screening of the Japanese Kwantung Army, under the premise that more than ten percent of the old, weak, sick and disabled have been eliminated, only 80% of the total number of prisoners of war are suitable for heavy physical labor. The fact that 20 percent of these so-called 18- to 35-year-old young men can only engage in light physical labor or hygiene, cooking a meal, etc., which shows that the physical condition of Japanese Kwantung Army prisoners of war is generally very weak, and it is not an exaggeration to call them a group of weak chickens.
The division of the above 4 levels is only a preliminary screening, and the actual situation is much more serious.
The PRISONERS who were considered by the Soviets to be able to perform heavy manual labor were only wishful thinking of the Soviets, and their physique was far inferior in real work practice, mainly in the inability to complete the same workload as the Germans.
It is not to be explained here that it is not that Japanese prisoners of war should be naturally less efficient than tall German prisoners of war if they are small.
(Captured Germans)
During World War II, german soldiers were more than 1.7 meters tall, and little Japanese were difficult to grow to 1.5 meters, which theoretically did make them inferior to Germans in heavy physical labor.
However, the Soviet Union treated German and Japanese prisoners of war equally, and although the height difference between the two sides was not small, the food standards set by the Soviet Union for Germans and Japanese were the same. In other words, a person of 1 meter 7 receives the same rations per day as a person of 1 meter 5.
The dietary standard goes something like this:
The standard for the supply of 1 kg of bread per day for prisoners of war engaged in underground operations and 900 grams per day for other underground operations.
In addition, 75 grams of meat, 80 grams of fish, 20 grams of animal oil, 5 grams of vegetable oil, 30 grams of sugar, 10 grams of dried fruits, 600 grams of vegetables or pickles, 200 ml of milk and 20 grams of salt.
On a monthly basis, each month 1 PRISONER of war engaged in underground work received 30 kg of bread, 2.25 kg of meat, 2.4 kg of fish, 0.6 kg of animal oil, 0.15 kg of vegetable oil, 0.9 kg of sugar, 0.3 kg of dried fruit, 18 kg of vegetables or pickles, 6 liters of milk, 0.6 kg of salt.
For little Japan, the Soviet Union also prepared miso soup taking into account their eating habits.
(Miso soup, a Japanese condiment with a salty taste)
If you don't work, the above dietary standards are not bad, but after all, the PRISONERS in the Soviet Union are not tourists and leisure, they are an important labor force. Therefore, both Japanese and Germans cannot eat enough under such a ration standard, and large Germans are especially hungry, but Germans are much better at completing their work than the Japanese.
According to a statistic in the first quarter of 1946, the number of German prisoners of war could be completed by 105.6%, and the number of Japanese prisoners of war could only be completed by 76%. Some people may think that this is caused by racial differences, but in fact, it is not, in the mid-19th century, the Chinese workers who built railroads in the United States were more efficient than whites, and the Chinese workers who repaired fortifications in Europe during World War I were also praised by Britain and France.
The performance of the Chinese can be seen that under the same nutritional conditions, the work efficiency of East Asians is higher than that of white people, and the efficiency of eating the same food in small Japan is only more than 70% of that of Germans, which can only be said that their physique is much lower than that of ordinary East Asians.
According to Soviet regulations, there were rewards for over-completion of work, such as a prisoner of war who would supply 100 grams of bread per day more than the standard if he completed 125% of the rated amount on the day. For the Japanese prisoners of war, only those who were extremely strong or who were particularly skilled in their work could reach the level of ordinary German prisoners of war.
But at the beginning of World War II, the Japanese soldiers were not so weak.
At the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, although the average height of Japanese devils on the Battlefield in China was only more than 1 meter 5, their weight reached more than 110 kilograms. At that time, although the average height of Chinese soldiers was half a head higher than that of Japanese soldiers, because they could not eat enough for a long time, their average weight was less than 100 pounds, and their physique was much weaker than that of Japanese soldiers.
It is recorded that when a Chinese soldier took up his bayonet and stabbed at the little devil, the other side could block the bayonet block of the stabbing with only one stroke, and sometimes even cracked the Mouth of the Chinese soldier.
(Physique of a Japanese soldier at the time)
With the elimination of well-trained old devils and the famine in Japan, the overall quality of Japanese soldiers has also declined sharply. By 1944, the average Japanese soldier had lost almost twenty pounds. At the end of World War II, our army had already gained a clear advantage over the Japanese army in the white-knife battle, and the little Japan changed from taking the initiative to fight with our army to fighting bayonets to shrinking into bunkers and not daring to come out. The Kwantung Army was constantly withdrawn due to a large number of elites, and their situation was similar to that of the Japanese army in Kannai. The Japanese Kwantung Army that the Soviets faced in 1945 was not one of the best elites of the early world war, but a third-rate force composed of mostly weak Japanese.
The strength of the Soviet army was overwhelmingly superior to that of the Japanese army.
The Soviet army that attacked the Japanese Kwantung Army was armed to the teeth, with a total strength of 1.5 million people, more than twice that of the Japanese Kwantung Army, half of which were elite troops who had been baptized in the Soviet-German battlefield.
Moreover, Stalin's idea was not only to destroy the Kwantung Army, but also to land in Hokkaido, so he showed the determination of the tiger to fight the rabbit, not only the total strength of more than 1 million troops, but also equipped this force with 4300 aircraft, 5500 tanks and self-propelled artillery.
The Kwantung Army not only had poor soldier quality, but also poor weapons and equipment.
There were no anti-tank weapons that effectively countered the soviet armored torrent, and watching the Soviet tanks rush over could only dry their eyes!
Only 50 aircraft can go to the sky, facing the advantage of a hundred times the Soviet fighters, what is the sky!
Small arms and ammunition are insufficient, and each soldier is equipped with only one base of bullets, and they can no longer be replenished after fighting!
Fighting bayonets is not enough, just by virtue of the small physique of the Japanese soldiers at that time, only 70% of the German soldiers, he could not fight!
Therefore, by the end of World War II, the Japanese Kwantung Army had no defense against the attack of the Soviet Army, and it was right to be beaten to the point of piss!
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